It is surprisingly difficult to find a safe place to scream.
The apartment is out because I don’t want to scare my pets, let alone my neighbors. Same rules apply and constraints appear when I’m traveling and staying by myself. And sure I can make moderated attempts in the shower or with music playing or holding a pillow to my mouth, but I haven’t because that sort of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?
I can’t go to a park and do it because a child might be playing nearby, a couple might be out for a walk, a person might be running and get scared, you get the idea.
Someone might hear me and think I’m in distress, and, I’m not.
I briefly lived in my friends’ above-garage apartment in Seattle, and one day, I was enticed by the idea of screaming in my car, when the garage door was down and my friends and their kids were at work and school. I sat there and tried, but it felt too constrained. The pets were still right upstairs after all and something told me that if I really, really did it right, I’d need to be standing, I’d need my entire body. Oh, and it would be loud.
I can’t remember when or why I first Googled, “Lioness roar,” or at what point I found the above photo. Though I could stare at her all day, and sometimes just a quick glance sets my chest at ease. Look at her! There isn’t a part of her body that is not fully engaged in the act itself.
And I imagine what that would feel like. That full body release. I’ve tried to find it other ways, the rare times I’ve cried with chest-heaving sobs or smiled so happily that my mouth ached from the stretch. I’ve tried to find it in even rarer (and more precious) moments of profound contentment or delight. It’s not the same. And I suspect the sobbing and smiling and aching and delighting might also be so rare because I haven’t roared, not really, not yet.
Then Fleishman Is in Trouble premiered last year. The drama, created by Taffy Brodesser-Akner based on her 2019 book of the same name, featured a pivotal scene where Claire Danes, impeccably — maybe even divinely cast — screams.
She just screams.
It takes some prodding. At first she’s resistant, then embarrassed, then curious, then embarrassed for being curious. She gives a dainty, appropriate yell. You can tell it’s coming from the back of her throat, and is still controlled. She’s prodded further and whatever is bubbling up, has been suppressed and stepped on and buried starts to rumble and rise. It’s terrifying. I watched it on mute several times, afraid of scaring the dogs and the neighbors. Finally, I connected my headphones and turned up the volume.
What comes from within her is so big it moves through her nostrils, eyes, ears, skin, you can watch it just destroying her from the inside out, like an explosion or incineration, until nothing is left.
The very next scene, I believe, is her blissfully and ravenously devouring a giant salad while her companion looks on in shock and confusion. She’s entirely empty. Every single she thing she stuffed inside herself [here I imagine actual crumbled up paper, sometimes rocks, anything she could find and shove into her mouth, metaphorically …] no longer exists.
Afterward, I immediately Googled: “Scream therapy near me?”; “Classes where you can scream in D.C.?”; “Retreats for screaming?” “Claire Danes screams, can others do that?”
I laughed then, I laugh more now.
But it’s something, isn’t it? The longing to yell until you incinerate everything stuffed and scary is something indeed.
In third grade, a police office came to our suburban elementary school to teach the class a special scream in case a stranger tried to pull us into their car. I lived five short blocks from school and my grandma picked me up most days, but the fear of being pulled into a strangers car had somehow already entered my consciousness even before the officer showed up. I think it must have been a concern for a lot of parents back then too (before the guns).
Everyone had to practice the extra loud scream. We were all crowded onto the reading rug in a circle, and each child would step forward and do it, except for me.
I couldn’t make any sound come out, not even a small yell.
Eventually, I managed to push out a hoarse little “ahhh,” which sounded more like a hiccup. Mrs. Hodges and the police office assured me it was OK, I was very shy after all.
Another office came back in fourth grade and we received the same instruction. And still I could only push forth a bashful “ahh!” It was OK again because I was still shy.
Reader, you may be wondering just what I need to get off my chest, what I’ve buried or stuffed down that I desire but struggle so profoundly — and now publicly — to roar right out of me.
Does it have to be one thing? Does it have to be a twisted secret or source of shame? Maybe a little, but only in so far as needing or longing for something and admitting that often feels shameful.
There isn’t a secret. There isn’t a single event. There isn’t a villain, and I’m not a victim.
Recently, when my nephew and I were talking about the subject of his college essay, we got on the topic of “Hockey Brayden,” an alter ego of sorts, the person he is when he is on the ice — and he’s been on the ice most days out of every week since he was four-years-old. I love “Hockey Brayden” and “Brayden Brayden” and ever iteration of the identity he’s creating and re-creating as he grows.
It certainly made me reflect on “Journalist Jen,” and “Mom’s Daughter Jen” and “Prof Jen” and “Shy Jen” and “Best Jen” (but she’s for another time), the ways in which we see ourselves and want others to see us; The ways in which we feel safest showing up in the world. They’re all the same person, just with different characteristics underlined and in bold.
And there is a version of me that was comfortable yelling. I’m just not comfortable with her. She was an early prototype of “Mom’s Daughter Jen,” so maybe “Defender Jen,” or — as I’ve thought of her over the recent years, “Best in a Zombie Apocalypse Jen.”
Furious, embracing her wild and sacred rage? Defender Jen is righteous, well, most of the time.
She can summon the scream.
The problem is it never felt cathartic when I screamed to defend someone or something else. It wasn’t a release so much as a warning. More often than not it was fear or powerlessness dressed up as bravado. And there wasn’t a release after. In fact, there was nearly always regret.
So that was part of the problem. The other of course is that yelling brings attention, doesn’t it?
Not only does yelling in anger or frustration or defense often bring reciprocal yelling but yelling yelling of any kind, can’t often be downplayed or explained away. And no version of me has ever wanted too much attention, which is to say to be seen as difficult.
I have not wanted to shine a light on the crumped up “paper” smushed into every crevice of my chest cavity, haven’t wanted anyone to see me doing the crumpling or the chewing or the stuffing either. So I certainly wouldn’t want witness to the screaming it all out part, right?
Maybe that’s what third-grade and fourth-grade me feared. Maybe that’s why even if there was (and there are now!) scream classes, I haven’t signed up.
This sort of scream should be solitary.
Maybe. I used to think so…
The Problem is it’s not just about release, right?
I mean if it was just about pain or embarrassment, would our lioness look so powerful? Or so like she was enjoying herself?
Do you ever laugh so loudly and unexpectedly that you startle yourself?
Has it ever happened, and it feels like you nearly coughed up a bit of soot from the fire in your belly?
It’s happened to me.
What I don’t know how to scream free is the wanting*… and the grief about not saying anything sooner, even as a little girl, even now.
And you?
*Love, financial freedom and creativity, joy, adventure and connection, of course.
Editor’s note:
Growing and tending to Our Women in the World is so scary, so intuitive and so rewarding. It constantly pushes me to ask: Can this be a place for more than one thing? Can the threads connecting it all, the grand tapestry, come together without force? I believe so, yes.
And on the etymology of the word sermon.
sermon (n.) Throughout Middle English the word also was used in its non-religious classical sense of "a discourse, a discussion."
Know a Woman Who Should Join Our Conversation?
Share in the comments below or email me at jennifer.koons@protonmail.com.